Wireless communication devices operating on a cellular network, such as a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, are generally configured to report cell measurements for a current serving cell and/or for one or more neighbor cells to support possible handovers. For example, in an LTE network a wireless communication device can be required to report reference signal received power (RSRP) and reference signal received quality (RSRQ) measurements for defined events. In many networks, a wireless communication device is configured to report a filtered measurement calculated in accordance with a network configured filter coefficient from a set of instantaneous measurement samples that can be captured over a measurement period that can be defined by the network.
The filtered measurements that are used for event evaluation and reporting can lag behind the instantaneous measurement samples. In this regard, in fast fading channel conditions, a measurement filtered using the network configured filter coefficient can weight samples captured earlier in the measurement period such that the filtered average of the measurement samples can mask fast fading channel conditions reflected by instantaneous measurement samples captured later in the measurement period. This lag can lead to a delay in the triggering of reporting events, and thus a delay in device handover. In some instances, this delay can result in call drops.